Focused - 37: The Twelve-Week Year

Episode Date: December 26, 2017

We wrap up the year with a discussion of navigating holidays and vacations, David's thoughts about getting projects to completion in the new year, Jason's update to his Not-To-Do List, setting the bar high for taking on new clients, end-of-year appreciation gifts for clients, and holiday seasonality.

David Sparks and Jason Snell spent their careers working for the establishment. Then one day, they'd had enough. Now, they are independent workers, learning what it takes to succeed in the 21st century. They are free agents. Welcome back to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in a digital age. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by my fellow host, Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, David. Hello, Jason. We're back for our one last episode of 2017.

Yeah, yeah. It's pretty nice, right? We made it through a year. Yeah, I hope everybody's in the holiday spirit. And we're going to talk about that a little bit, I think. This is one of our regular episodes now, what we call the regular episodes, where we talk. It's just you and me. We're talking. I actually look forward to these, to tell you the truth, because I got a lot on my mind. Yeah, well, let it all out.

This is what I believe in podcasting is therapy. So, you know, let it all out. And we should talk about the holidays because, you know, we're dropping this episode right after Christmas. And there are lots of special issues that come up during this time of year for people like us. Yeah, we even heard from listeners on some of these questions, too. But for me, it's a double whammy this year. We're celebrating 25 years of marriage, and I'm turning 50, and a whole bunch of different things going on. We're going to Europe for 10 days right after Christmas. So I, not only do I have the holidays in fact affecting the business, I also have a little vacation as

well. So it's, it's, it's nutty. Yeah. So what, how are you, how are you coping with, uh, you've got, yeah, you've got holiday things and vacation things and people often are taking time time off, whether they travel or not, this time of year. How are you making it work? What are you going to do in advance? What are you going to not do? What are you going to bring with you? I would like to hear your plan. Yeah, it's tough because on the lawyer side, the end of the year stuff for a lot of the businesses I represent are compliance and corporate stuff.

So I've been doing a lot of that. I started early this year so I could kind of be on schedule to leave. And one of the things I'm going to do, because, you know, I've realized when you go on these vacations, you really can't do big projects. And if you do, why are you on vacation? But at the same time, I'm the, I'm it for the for the business you know if a client has a problem they need me to deal with it and what i'm so i'm going to do is i'm going to be on emergency mode for the for the trip and because we're going out of the country that that changes a couple things like for instance what do you do with your phone i i called up my my cell provider they have a

thing where if you pay 10 bucks a day, your phone just works wherever you are. And it uses your number. You don't have to get a different SIM. And I decided, well, I'm going to go ahead and pay for that. Because if my client calls my phone number, I should be able to pick it up and just kind of deal with it. And I don't really want all of them necessarily to know that I'm out of town. I'd rather let them just think that I'm always there for them and not have to have that consideration. just think that I'm always there for them and not have to have that consideration, you know,

because as a, as a solo, um, you know, maybe they would think it'd be better to go to a big firm. If the solo, it just doesn't answer your phone when he goes out of town. So I've got to kind of like do that juggling thing, but I'm definitely not bringing any big projects with me, but I am bringing the necessary technology to solve any problem within reason while I'm on the road. All right. I'm telling some clients I'm going, but I mean, I'm not making a big deal about it either. Are you doing a lot of pre-work to get things out of the way for your, for, I mean, on, on the, I guess, non-attorney side?

Yeah. Yeah. And, um, and the same thing, I mean, cause I, I'm, I'm the weirdo that has two businesses. Um, you know, I'm, I'm getting, um getting Mac Sparky stuff lined up, Mac Power users. We've got shows recorded, knock on wood, by the time I leave throughout the time I'm gone. And even we've got one ahead because I'm expecting to come back to have some fires to put out. That always happens. So I'm trying to keep myself for that, uh, for that week, I come back without a lot of appointments and just the ability to kind of bring everything back to level. And, um, you know, just, it's all a question of planning, but in this case, I knew I was going

to be doing this as of about six months ago. So I've had plenty of time to kind of put the pieces in place. That's good. That's good. It's a lot of extra work though, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know what they say? You work twice as hard before you go on a vacation and twice as hard when you get back and and then everything works okay how about yourself yeah i'm not going anywhere this time which is great yeah um although i i am recalling that i was getting ready for a trip to hawaii last year at this time and that's not as great because i would like to do that and we're not doing that but i um i definitely want there to be a lighter load there are a couple of reasons the the this week this very week so so a little a peek behind the curtain we recorded this episode

which is dropping after christmas on boxing day we recorded this the previous week. And there are a bunch of reasons for that, you know, working right after Christmas, you were headed off on your trip. I have a lot of episodes of podcasts that are like, we're either, you know, people are traveling, or for various reasons, like I need to do some things in advance, because I'm relying on other people. And even though I'm not going anywhere, you know, I don't really want to work all next week my kids are going to be home the whole week right and other people don't want to work yeah so um so next this week as as you listen to this um my wife is working i'm going to work some but not as much and my kids are going to be at home.

And then my daughter's actually going on vacation with a friend the second week of the first week in January. So, the net result has been that for various reasons, I am doing a huge amount of work the week before Christmas so that I have a lot less work the week after Christmas and the week after that. And some of that also has to do with, um, podcast schedules and things like we pre-taped two episodes of upgrade for the end of the year because of, um, because that show falls on a Monday and those are both holidays. So neither of us wanted to record. That's unusual for you guys too. I mean, cause it's a lot of times it's current event stuff yeah we very rarely do pre-taped episodes we do them once or twice a year and it just so happens that we ended up recording four episodes upgraded in

a two-week span and um as you discovered when you asked me about something earlier this week about my availability for a podcast i discovered at that moment that I had 10 podcasts to record the week before Christmas. 10 separate recording sessions. And what was funny is after that happened, one of them I canceled because there were too many, and another one was then added to my schedule, getting me back to 10 because it turns out. And Stephen Hackett and Mike Hurley from RelayFM, I was talking to them about this this too they both have 10 podcasts in that same week too some of them in common with me and some of them not and i feel like this is now the rhythm of my life as an independent which is the the the crescendo that leads up to the break

where the work just amplifies and it is you know you are doing a huge amount of work so that you can push things out and cover um what you know cover the gap and then when you and then you and then you kind of jump into the air and you've got your your break time it's great and then you land and you're going 70 miles an hour and uh i don't know how this turned into like an evil kenevil kind of metaphor but it's that right so both it's it's this nice moment where you're kind of floating and it's bracketed by the rev up and the rev down again and and this is just how it is now so i now expect that for in order for me to have a very light week between christmas and new years uh it's because i've done almost two weeks of work the week before it's interesting to me because like i we've this has happened to us on mac

power users a couple times and with this show because both of these shows are not like news heavy so we can cheat and get a little bit ahead once in a while and i always find that when i've got a couple weeks off i miss it you know i actually wish you know i find myself missing getting in front of the microphone, but, but 10 in a week, boy, that's, that is some work there. It's, it's a lot. It's a lot. But again, those will 10 are not posting in the week, right? It is the, that's the side effect of this is it's, you know, I'm recording, I'm recording an episode for that day. And then an episode, I mean, let me look at my calendar for last week and I'll tell you what it was. So I recorded, uh, an upgrade for that day. I recorded a podcast for a friend

who wanted me to be a guest, recorded a liftoff for that day. Uh, there was a, a TV episode that we did that was also that day, but then we have free agents. We were pre-taping two episodes. Um, I've got, uh, incom incomparable that's a pre-tape for new year's day i've got an uh upgrade that's a pre-tape for christmas day last week we pre-taped for new year's day um so i've got a bunch of pre-tapes moved in there and that is all just to get to clear clear the decks for the holidays and also to get people together because then everybody's going to be traveling and stuff and you can't do you know what i've decided is in the podcasting business especially you really can't count on people being around between a few days before christmas and a few days after new year's

and part of this too is my history covering technology this is not actually true anymore i've internalized it and i think it's not actually accurate but um ces the big tech trade show is the first week in january basically and macworld expo used to be the first week in january and so mentally i've also kind of blocked off the week this year it's new year's is on a monday like i kind of blocked that week off too as being like nobody's going to be around everybody's going to be busy with other stuff so i've kind of walled that week off. So I'm really viewing it as a kind of a two week block that I have to take care of in advance. And, uh, that's just how it is, right? You, you end up, um, if you're doing this yourself, you've got to find a way to bridge those gaps, um, because you do need to take the

time, right? You need to be able to take your time. You need to make that trip to Europe. You should do that. Absolutely. But you've got to figure out there's no one else to hand it off to. You got to figure it out yourself. Yeah. For me at the old firm, I, my experience was generally that when I went out of town, nobody really took care of my clients problems, you know, that was, um, uh, so, um, so I've always kind of been dealing with that. But how do you feel about it? I mean, you told me you're up to possibly 365 podcasts for this year. Yeah. I mean, this is your new life.

How do you feel about it? I feel pretty good. I mean, it's a combination of things, right? And I am going to do the final tally on New Year's Eve, I think, or that week at least. I guess this week as this is released to see what the final numbers are. Because I may be very close to a one-to-one days to podcast episodes ratio. But it's fine. I mean, going into this year, I expected fully that my podcast income would eclipse my writing income. And I haven't,

we'll see the final numbers, but I think that's the case. And this goes back to everything that we've said on past shows about being flexible and having multiple revenue buckets, because you don't know what will go up and what will go down. And I've got some of my writing stuff has gone down, but the podcasting stuff has gone up. And you kind of lean into, I'm going to lean into the growth area, which is the podcast stuff. But also podcasting is, you know, some of those things are not generating much in terms of money. And I do them because I like them. And looking to, you know, 2018, we can talk about this in a little bit. I will rebalance and see whether that, you know, this year worked and if there are places where I

want to make changes. Yeah. Kind of a little overlap with Mac Power users. As I'm leaving on my trip, one of the big challenges for me was what tech do I bring? You know, I figured out the phone thing. I'm going to go ahead and pay so people can get a hold of me. I wanted to just bring the iPad, but I ultimately decided I'm going to bring a MacBook too, because there's something, you know, the Mac, the iPad has come a long way, but there's some software that's just not really up to snuff for some of the stuff I do. So I'm going to have to carry two things around here, but that, that was the big decision I made the other day. Oh, cool.

Yeah. I think that's, I think that's fine. I get it. I mean, it's amazing how much, uh, about travel now is tech stuff. Yeah, it is. But it's good. The other thing I did with my trip, being a free agent, is I did build some down days into the trip. I mean, in general, I don't like going on trips where you have plans every day anyway.

That doesn't feel like a vacation to me. But my family kind of understands. I got to pay the bills. And if a client has a problem or I need to do something with the blog or whatever, I just need to have some time to do that stuff so we can still take trips. Yeah. Right. I think the last time I took a big trip, we did a, I did a kind of a warning of like, there are going to be, I didn't block anything out, but it was much more like there are going to be i didn't block block anything out but it was much more like there are going to be a few hours here and there where i'm going to say this is i have to do this and so

like everybody be prepared for the fact that i'm going to have some blocks of time where you know you'll have to go do something else um because i'm going to be working on this and and it's not ideal, but it does sometimes happen. I try to, like you said, it's the unavoidable stuff. It's the emergency stuff. It's kind of unavoidable, but you try to avoid as much of it as you can. What I don't want to do is go on a trip for 10 days to a place that I rarely ever, if ever, you know, will get to go to again, and then spend a day of it doing just kind of like work that I could have done at home. I'm going to try to avoid that as much as possible. But some stuff can be unavoidable when it's all on you. Yeah. But like, for instance, like I'm writing, I'm working on a book right now. I'm not going

to work on the book while I'm on the trip. There you go. writing, I'm working on a book right now. I'm not going to work on the book while I'm on the trip. There you go. And, you know, I, I have some meat and potatoes types, you know, regular legal work that can all wait till I get back, but, but there'll be a client with a contract question and there'll be stuff like that. Uh, one of the things I like to do when I go on trips with family is just kind of get in the habit of waking up at six and just, you know, wherever you're staying Airbnb or a hotel, there's always a place you can go sit with a computer. And while everybody's kind of sleeping it off, you can, you can a lot of times take care of whatever needs to get taken care of and then go enjoy the day,

but also be willing to accept that that's not always going to be good enough. Maybe you need to sleep in cause you're out late or maybe something comes up in the middle of the day and you just need to take, you know, say,'m gonna you know beg off this four hour event you guys are doing and i'll take care of some stuff so i can enjoy time with you in the evening and just be okay with it because you know that's part of this lifestyle once you agree to do this um that that's part of it you don't have someone usually back at the office handling all this stuff for you so you've got to be willing to be flexible on trips. Well, have a good trip.

I will. And I'll hold down the fort back here while you're gone. Okay, I appreciate that. But you know, you might need to get paid. Yeah, I might. And that leads us into our first sponsor. Yeah, that's FreshBooks. Online invoicing made easy.

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Absolutely. So what are you thinking about as we head into the new year? Do you have any of that stuff going on in your head? I know I do. Oh, yeah. I mean, this is the sound of us shifting gears and turning from the holidays to thinking about 2018. Can it be? Okay.

So you go first. What do you have? What, what, what is, what is your, uh, what is your new year's thought? Not necessarily resolution,

but like, what are you thinking about? It's a good time calendar throughout the old calendar, bringing in the new calendar. Think about, um, think about how you've done things the last year and how you want to do things the next year.

I have, um, I've done something, Jason, I'm generally against the, uh, the last few months I've started reading some productivity books and so often, you know, I don't know why I just, I have something inside me doesn't like reading productivity books or they call it productivity porn. And to a certain extent, I believe that, you know, you get so hung up on all these different, you know, what's the flavor of the day on how you're supposed to get your work

done. And, and, and I do think it's a lot of the stuff seems like snake oil sales to me and a waste of time. But I decided, you know, there's some merit to this. And I just took a look at some of the top rated books and decided, you know, I need to be better at this stuff. So I read a couple. One of the ones I read was this book by Brian Morin called The 12 Week Year. And I didn't necessarily buy on everything he wrote, but I did like the thought of it. You know, the idea of why do we only think about, you know, how we're going to get better every year around January 1st? And why can't we put things on more of a, you know, how we're going to get better every year around January 1st. And why can't we put things on more of a, you know, a shorter schedule where we kind of hold ourselves

accountable more often. That's kind of one of the things I got out of it. It's good. I am. So my life doesn't really lend itself to a 12 week year because of the fact that I'm running two different businesses and they have different needs and timelines and everything. But an underlying problem for me is that I, um, I, I, I've said this on the show before, but you know, I've got, you know, two or three different things I do. I do the legal practice where I represent a lot of companies and I do kind of the podcasting blogger thing, which I think is going along nicely, but I've had this publishing business as well for years where I publish books. And when I quit my job, I thought I was going to get more books out and I've

actually got less books out and that has been weighing on me. And this book kind of helped me think about that. And, you know, and just the idea that I always make that the last priority in my life. That's the, that's the underlying problem is why I can't get books out because I will always put client work or podcast work or blog work ahead of that. And as a result, it just never gets done. And, uh, and reading this book got me thinking, I need to start treating some of these passion projects and these things that I want to do on my name, uh, as more the way I treat client work, you know, and put it on a schedule. It's part of your job, in other words, and not this thing that just floats out there.

And I don't know that the 12 weekweek year makes necessarily sense, but putting, like, putting together a schedule, like, there's a book that I very much want to finish. I've been working on it a year and a half, but not very, you know, not very diligently. And while I'm on my trip, I plan to make my whatever week plan to get that book out. You know, I'm going to put it on a schedule. It's going to be a project like somebody's paying me to do it. And that really is something that I'm looking forward to trying as an experiment. And if it works, I'd like to start. The idea of the 12-week year is that you break the year into segments,

and then you're always like working on a deadline and it makes you go faster. I don't want to put my whole life on that, but I want to start putting selective projects on that at least to start. My friend, Sean Blanc over at seanblanc.net, I believe did it where he does an eight week, you know, they do eight week bursts. And I think he got that from the 37 signal guys. And I think there's something to this and I haven't really nailed it down yet. Maybe next show and next month I'll have feedback on it, but I am, I'm definitely going to be doing something where I put myself, uh, under more time constraints and pressure for the stuff I'm

passionate about, but I can't seem to get done. Deadlines are great. I mean, you're talking to the guy who did national novel writing month for several years seem to get done. Deadlines are great. I mean, you're talking to the guy who did national novel writing month for several years. Um, deadlines are great. It's amazing how we work with deadlines. And I feel like I, I, I hear exactly what you're saying, which is you have these things that you just want to do, but you don't prioritize them in the same way that you prioritize other work. And the net result is you don't do them because priority of undefined will always be defeated by priorities that are assigned and so you just never do them and i've got those same kind of things where i've got projects that are just out there that i want to do and then a year passes and you realize, oh, I haven't done anything. Or even, I mean, for me, having been out here doing this for three years now, I've got things that I wanted to do when I started

that I haven't done. And it's been three years. And why? It's because those are not prioritized projects and I need to prioritize them. So, that, that's the, that's the challenge, right? Is that on the one hand, you need to feel like you're being responsible and choosing the right things. But at the other hand, you have to, you have to take the long view and say, this is also important and I'm also going to prioritize it and I'm going to put it on a schedule and I'm going to give myself a deadline. And even if that deadline isn't real, quote unquote, um, I'm going to do it because I need to, I need to focus and I need to get things done. Yeah. And the answer isn't real quote unquote um i'm going to do it because i need to i need to focus and i need to get things done yeah and the answer isn't just say i'm going to work like a crazy man and do it

all because uh one of the advantage of being a free agent is i have a much closer relationship with my kids now than i did before i mean you can't beat just being in the room i mean quality time is great but also just being in the room often is pretty great, too. So I'm not looking to say, well, I'm going to wake up at six and work until midnight every day and I'm going to get all this done. But, you know, I need to prioritize and I need to I need to treat myself as a client to a certain extent and figure out how to make that work. I don't even have the answer yet. But but this this book got me thinking along those lines. And I think I have at least an idea how I can get started. I did the big experiment over the last couple of months with timing and figuring

out how to get stuff that I don't want to do off my plate. And that's been a nice first step. But now the next step is saying, okay, I need to even be harder and say, what's even the stuff that I want to do and can do, but needs to come out of the way so I can make time for this other project. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, it's hard, but, um, but I think it's the only way it'll get done is by finding some way to prior and you want to find the proper priority, right? Like dropping everything else in order to do it is not the right way to do it either, but giving it a priority and having a having a plan and choosing what the right priority is instead of just like leaving it to the to the wind is uh that's not gonna work

yeah i've got one um because it's the end of the year in the beginning of the year i have been thinking in my you know i do this all the time but i i feel like it's a good time to to reconsider like again the earth goes around the sun there's nothing time continues to pass years are arbitrary you know where we draw the line in the year it could be anywhere um but this is the path we have chosen so okay so it's still like why not use it why not embrace the fact that we think about this as the starting point and the ending point and use it as a milestone so yeah i used to always make fun of it but now i just i'm just go with it well i mean what i say every time that it's new year's eve and everybody's cheering i say hey the earth continues to move around the

sun like i mean it doesn't really mean anything the world doesn't really change but it is a you know it's a scaffolding it's like it's like reaching the end of the line on a typewriter and and like hitting the side and sliding back you know that sound the chime and and the paper goes down and it's like on an old-timey movie because nobody uses typewriters anymore um it's like that it's like that's what it is it's just you're moving to the next line, but it is, it is a milestone anyway, even if it's not meaningful kind of fundamentally. And so I take this time to think about a lot of, a lot of stuff. just doing this examining the time i spend and that comes to time tracking and things like that but just more generally examining the projects i'm working on and finding out are there ways to optimize are there things i should stop doing in general are there things i should offload to other people is there um i have a whole list here like so one one thing that i'm thinking of is technology

and this this dovetails with finances when we talk about uh how you set up uh if you if you do a corporation if you incorporate um and it's better to spend money um at the end of the year you're spending money on on stuff you want to buy and then you're paying yourself out because you don't want to pass pay that you don't want to leave money in your profits if you've got a pass-through company because you will then get taxed on them personally, plus they're still belonging to the company, which means that if you get paid out of that, you will then get income tax and it's a double tax. So that's not great.

And just as an aside, the tax laws seem like they're all changing, so we don't know how much it is going to help free agents next year. Yeah, we don't know. But for this year, this is part of the cycle. So at the end of the year is a good time for me to make some capital investments, basically, to buy expensive stuff, to put it another way, that I want. It's not free, but if I'm going to do it, this is a good time, a convenient time to do it is at the end of the year. And so on the technology side, like I am, I am thinking about buying a new computer and my motivation in buying a new computer is not just,

ooh, shiny. I like new shiny computer. I bought a computer when I started. So it's been three years and I'll probably sell the computer I've got, or I'll hand it down to somebody in my family, but I'm not sure anyone in my family wants a giant iMac. So I'll probably just sell it. But the reason, the real motivator for me is if I buy like an iMac pro for $5,000, not cheap, what does it get me? Well, one of the things it gets me is time. Because some of the stuff I do is really slowed down by the fact that I have to sit and process enormous audio files and video files sometimes. And honestly, that is my number one motivator in considering buying a faster computer is I have things I have parts of my job, I have like half hour or hour long

bursts that could get cut by half with a faster computer. And I start to think, I'm willing to make that trade. I think I'm willing to make that trade to get a much faster computer and get some of this stuff out of my life. But I've also thought what I might do is offload some of that stuff to other people. I've talked about how I've offloaded some podcast editing and other things to other people and pay them to do this work that I used to do because I need that time for other things, other projects. And so I've actually given that some thought too of what if I, because right now I do some of the prep work for these podcasts and then i pass them the files and some of that is me being a perfectionist and i could just not do that

but occasionally i don't do that and then i hear the end result and i think oh no like i could have prevented that thing so i'm actually thinking that i might approach the people i use to do the editing and say can i I buy you this $300 piece of software that I currently use to prep the files so that you can do that and I won't do it anymore. And then, you know, they may have to click buttons and wait half an hour or whatever, but I'm not doing it anymore. And that's the same trade, right? It's money for time. And given that I have very little time and I have enough money that I don't feel like I cannot spend money to buy time, that's the trade that I'm making right now. Yeah, a couple things

on that. First is I totally agree. I think that's like the second level free agency tip. I mean, when you first start, you don't want to spend a penny you don't have because you don't know that you're going to make any money. Right. But then once you get over that hump and start saying, oh, wait a second, I can actually be more efficient and do better if I spend some money. That's a hump to get over, and that's not easy for anybody. Yeah, and the plane has to be flying, right? When you're struggling to lift off the ground, the last thing you want to do is pull back on any part of the thing that's giving you momentum. But once the plane is in the air, which my business is definitely in, it's flying, it's in the air. You know, we have recurring revenue, everything seems to be going. Again, there are bumps, there's always all that stuff we talk about and we stress about and you wake up three in the morning, think about. is literally, can I spend money to take this part of what I do away so that I can replace it with

something of greater value than that money? And that could be more time for me to do other work that pays better so that the money I send out, I'm actually buying something that pays better, so net positive for me. the other thing that is is also true is or it's your sanity you know or it's your time with your family or it's you're overworked and you need to throw things off your plate and sometimes it can be that which is yay i've got this amount of money in my business um but it's more work than i'm capable of doing and and one way you can do is you can start turning away work. Another thing you can do is pay somebody to do some of that work, which is what businesses do, right?

But you as a person don't think about it. Yeah. I had this year when I was finishing that book, the 60 Tips book I published this year, I have a person that's super reliable that I wanted to have help me with closed caption, but she was driving down to my house to do the closed captioning software to, uh, to work on it. I think that's the dumbest thing in the world. And it was $200 to put that software in her computer and she was happier project got done faster. And it's like, how come I didn't think of that before she drove down here the first time? I mean, it's just, uh, that was was a block in my head or something so i don't think the people who edit podcasts for me listen to the show but um this is a potentially a spoiler alert that i i'm thinking that i'm thinking very

hard that before the end of the year i may just gift to them a serial number that i have purchased from a maker of high-end audio software and say, yeah, you know, this way I don't need to send these, these files to you after processing them anymore. And that might be like worth it's, it will pay for itself over the course of the year. If I do that, that's honestly,

I just had that thought, which is like, how much time will that save over the course of just 2018? And how much does that software cost? Oh, it's like a no brainer. Like I should absolutely do that. Why have not, why have I not thought of this before? Like it's, it's obviously it's a, it's a feature. It's a, um, how should I put this? It's a, it's something that I demand in terms of the work, right? So it's, it's something that if I don't do it, demand in terms of the work, right? So it's, it's something that if I don't do it, they aren't capable of doing it and they don't, they're not going to do it. Um, but if I say this is something

that has to be part of this project, here's the software to make it happen. Please do this now. They'll do it. Um, and probably not charge me anymore for it. Um, and it's off my plate, but even if they do, it's probably worth it. Even if they did charge me a little extra to go through that time, it would probably be worth it for me. But clearing it off my plate is the biggest thing. So technology is part of this equation. Managing my priorities is part of this equation. And I will continue to use the calendar as a way to look back on my output from

2017 and ask myself that question which is is there anything that i do that i should just stop doing yeah whether it's handed off or just cease doing it and year, this was that moment sometime last year where I realized that I, I was, um, participating in the production of podcast stuff for the incomparable that I, I did not want to do again. So like, um, we have a podcast called the game show, which is great. It's one of the favorite, my favorite things that we do. It every other week people playing games uh it's fun and i in 2016 i made a point of very heavily producing it i scheduled it i edited a bunch of them um when there was a gap in the schedule i filled. I either recruited somebody to do it or I would do an episode myself in order to fill it so that we hit every other week on schedule. And at the end of the year, I announced to everybody who was involved in the project that in 2017, I would not be filling the holes in the schedule.

I would not be editing all the episodes that I would pay somebody to do it. And I was not going to try particularly hard. I mean, I would still remind people that we were, if we were short on, on episodes, but I was not going to, uh, steer that ship like I had been because it was not something that I, it took a lot of time and effort and it was not worth it and big surprise to those out there who are control freaks big surprise in 2017 we never missed a week everything got done and i never had to fill and i saved all of that and i paid people to edit and i saved all that time and it was fine so i'm thinking about that for 2018 of like are there other things that I'm doing because I feel like I need to that I really don't need to. And that's a hard one. That's a hard one to, to process, but I'm,

and I don't have anything like that I've decided yet, but I feel like that's the other important thing for me to do between now and the end of the year is just ponder a little bit more what not to do. Yeah. And I know I talked about this last month, but a real eye-opening thing for me was the idea of a hit list, of finding some things in your free agent business that you don't want to do or you don't like doing or that otherwise could be done better by somebody else and start knocking those out.

And I don't think the answer is knocking out 10 things in one month, but like Jason, pick one or two you know target rich or i guess low-hanging fruit and and get rid of them and then look for what's the new low-hanging fruit and boy if we could all do that this would be so much easier yeah yeah i mean you can't you can't always do it but it's it's always worth having that analysis. Like you pick up work or it kind of evolves naturally. At some point, you have to look at it and say, why am I doing this?

And, you know, a lot of the stuff you're doing makes sense, right? But every so often, you will find something and say, I don't know why. What is the benefit I get out of this? Oh, well, because I want it the way I want it. Is there some other way to do that? Can you ask somebody else to do it the way you want it? Does it matter? Does anybody care? Is it, what are you getting paid for that? Sometimes it's that simple. What are you getting paid for this? Well, if that's true, why are we still doing this thing, right? of the man that, um, that, uh, not to do lists were just as important as to do lists and businesses had to have them because you always want to do new things and nobody ever wants to kill old things, but you have to, because you can't keep just adding, you have to subtract. And, uh, as, as

free agents, it's the same principle. So this is a good time. I would say. Again, I don't have a business advice hat to put on, but if I did, this is the point in the show where I would put it on and say, hey, use the calendar as an excuse to think about what you're doing and consider whether some of it is not worth doing. It's a simple one. Not even saying making a New Year's resolution

or anything like that. Just use the turn of the calendar as an opportunity to ponder if there are things that you do that you don't need to do yeah i think you should always be thinking that but this is a good time to try and kickstart yourself yeah all right um we got a couple more things to talk about but let's take a break and tell you about our other sponsor. This week, this episode of Free Agents is brought to you by Squarespace. Enter the offer code freeagents at checkout and you'll get 10% off your first purchase. Make your next move with Squarespace. Squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea. You get a unique domain, award-winning templates, there's a whole lot more. Whether you want to create an online

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Make your next website. Free agents need to make websites. Yes, we do. What else is going on, David? What else is on your agenda for looking forward to 2018? Yeah, the other thing, and this is really related to the conversation we just had, is because I do plan on giving myself some deadlines and getting some of my own projects

rolling better in the next year, it also got me thinking, okay, so that is going to have an impact on the legal side, you know, the legal side of the business. And I think I want to take a closer look at how I onboard clients coming in the next year. I think I've been a little too liberal in it, to tell you the truth and, um, I'm going to be more selective and that's always a challenge. You never want to say no to people that want to pay you money. And this is an ongoing theme in our show. It's almost like a drinking game probably, but the, uh, but you know, you're always reminding yourself of this stuff, you know, when you work with clients. And so I'm in 2018, I'm going to be more careful about things.

I want to just do things that I know I'm really good at with people that I want to work with. And I've generally been good about people I want to work with. But sometimes they ask me. I'm doing more referral type work now where I send somebody out to somebody else. And I just want to be a little more careful, I think, which is a great problem to have. Sure. Uh, but I, uh, but I think, I think I need to get better at that in the next year. Uh, I always worry about the future. You never know is the max Sparky stuff going to dry up one day and everybody's going to switch to Android and nobody wants my books or anything anymore. And that's it. And if that's the case, my law practice is not in the shape to take care of me.

So I don't want to abandon it. And I enjoy it, too. But I think I can afford to be a little more selective in it in order to let me pursue the stuff I really want to go after at the same time. But these are things I'm thinking about. I don't really have answers about, but I guess everybody that's doing this free agent thing is probably struggling with the same stuff. Sure.

Sure. And it's an ongoing process, right? The, the, all of it is not, if there was, look,

if there was an easy answer, we would not need a podcast. Right. But instead it's always that constant processing. Like I think I keep thinking about that, um, about from the perspective of like, what happens if I, you know, what do I have going on that is strong, that could potentially be strong in the future, even though like podcasting is pretty strong for me right now and the writing is fine. Do I have other things bubbling? What else,

you know, what are my other moves that I possibly have? And I keep thinking about that in the background. It's not super necessary right now, but I want to have, I want to keep thinking about it. So if it becomes more necessary, I will have already given it some thought. Speaking of your book, I wanted to mention something that I talked about, which is I, my book about photos came out. No, not my novel.

Yeah, no, my book about computers, because it's less exciting. No, I need to make no not my novel yeah no my book about computers because it's it's less exciting my no i need to make time for my novel and schedule it like we said earlier but my book about photos came out and uh this is an example too of knowing that i need to do something but then also working with somebody who's going to hold me to a schedule and once i made that promise of like well i want to you know i'll'll have it done by Thanksgiving and it'll be out before Christmas, um, to Joe Kissel, who's publishes it, then it was going to happen. Cause I promised that it would, and it did, and it came out and, uh, and so it's out there now and it was, it felt good, but it was also really interesting to see that process where I was, I was holding off on doing the work. And then finally,

when I committed and once I committed the ball was rolling and continued all the way to the end. And it just reminded me that so much of it is setting dates and putting together a plan and then knowing you have a deadline to hit. And for me, that's kind of like the rocket fuel fuel or at least i've got a tank of rocket fuel but i don't know how much to load in the rocket until i know where i'm where i'm going and when i need to get there at which point it's it's just more like a machine where it just kind of happens so it happened so in the end that project got done but it got congratulations it got done so yeah thank you um it's good to good to get the book update out it's a it's a challenge though but you did it.

Sure. So if you took a bunch of photos with your Apple gear, you need to go buy Jason's book. Sure, you can do that if you like. It's out there. I'll put a link in the show notes. We heard from John who talked about, hey, it's the end of the year. What do you guys as free agents do for client gifts and appreciation? Oh, that's a good one. Is that a thing you do yeah i do i i send a card to all of the incomparable panelists and frequent and hosts like frequent panelists and hosts i i have

a list that i curate of that and then i send them a card and usually like a goodie or something and for the um most frequent panelists on the on the main incomparable podcast since that is a podcast that is advertising and generates revenue for me i and is a panel show i don't have any you know it would not if if i paid people per appearance or something like that there's no way i could even do the podcast like it's just not you'd have to shut it down the amount of overhead would be ridiculous but at the same time i also appreciate the fact that people are spending their time being on this podcast that i make money from so at the end of the year what i do is i kind of calculate out who the most frequent guests are on the incomparable and um I will

sometimes send them like little uh little yeah little uh goodies or even gift cards as thank yous and it's not the same as you know writing them a check for their appearances but I do want to I do want to show that they're valued and that they have helped contribute to this thing that I do. And so that's what I do is that. So I've got my personal Christmas card list that goes out. And my wife and I were talking about this the other day because I think she and I had a misunderstanding about this where she was thinking I should hold these cards for the incomparable people for when I'm mailing out the of you know the thank you for the end of the year and all of that and i said no no no it's two separate groups with overlap but like the people who are getting a christmas card are getting a christmas card because i want to send them a christmas card

and then there's another group that includes those people and some other people who are going to get you know stickers or you know uh whatever they're going to get uh and some gift people who are going to get, you know, stickers or, you know, whatever they're going to get and some gift cards and, you know, a thank you note. But that anyway, that's, that's what I do, but it's all about the incomparable, especially because that that's not a, because of the way that business works, where there's not a lot of, I'm paying you to do this, I'm paying you to do that. It's all just sort of like people are just doing this stuff and having fun that I want to thank them at the end. So that's where all of my kind of the equivalent of like client gifts goes is to them. Yeah. I am like for the law practice,

I give out gifts, but not every year. This was a thing that I was actually challenged with earlier this year, two or three months ago. OmniFocus told me it was time to figure this out for the year. And I ultimately decided this year I'm going to skip because it's just, I don't have the time to deal with it. I've got this trip planned and I just knew I was going to be underwater as it was. But a few years ago I sent out phone batteries, you know, just like a little lipstick size phone battery. And I had them print my firm name on the side. And the trouble is I represent about 150 companies and some of them have two or three people in them. And if you buy a decent gift, you know, you're going to spend three or $4,000 doing that. And I honestly just can't afford to do that every year. And I don't want to send out

like cheap gifts, you know? So I thought, well, I'll just do every few years. I'll do a nice gift. And I think that's fine. I don't think people really care that much that I represent, to tell you the truth. But I do try to get something out every year, like a card or something. But this year, I'm not doing any of that because I'm just underwater right now. I don't have time for it. But I do think it's a good idea, especially if you have a client focused free agent business, don't do what I do. I mean, actually send cards

out or, or something to keep in the front of the mind. Yeah. I think, I think if you've got, you know who those people are, right? If it's people, if it's people you, you rely on, um, people who are giving you work, showing your appreciation for them, uh, in some way is a, is a good thing. And it doesn't have to come across as anything other than this is a good time to do it to show your appreciation. It doesn't have to be marketing. It doesn't have to be, you know, little, you know, weird and gooey and all of that. It can just literally be happy holidays or happy new year or thank you. And I think it's nice to do that. And like I said, for me, it's more these people that I do podcast stuff with, but I think that the principle is the same, which is what you're doing

is saying you are a part of what I do and you're a part of my success. And thank you. This is the time when we say thank you. Josh wrote in on Twitter, he says, I'm sure you'll talk about how the holiday season as a free agent, interesting to know how much it affects you with higher expenses and perhaps less work available. And I think that is something to kind of plan for because people are busy during the holidays. And a lot of time when you're hiring free agents, you're not going to spend as much on them and you're not going to have as much work during that time. I think it all depends on what business you're in, frankly. I mean, in some ways, I actually make more money at the end of the year because of the end of the year corporate compliance stuff.

But everybody has seasons in their free agent business where things are slow. And I do think that's an important lesson is to figure out, to know your business, to know when that is. Like the retail folks all know that January and February are going to be slow and, uh, you know, make hay while the sun shines. And if you know when those periods are going to be there, uh, that you can use that to your advantage. I mean, not only is it true that you're going to have periods where you don't make as much money, number one, you'll know that that is a slow period. So don't freak out of things slow a little bit. And maybe you can build into your business plan during those down times is the time that you retool something or you pursue some other project that you always wanted to have time for. Or maybe you just take a little time off yourself.

But I thought that was a good question from Josh. And I do think it's important to know when you're going to have the slow period. Yeah, I was thinking two other things. It totally depends on what business you're in. But one way to look at it is if you know a period is going to be slow and maybe it's the holiday season, take advantage of that, right? Maybe this is, we talk a lot about vacations. We talked about at the beginning of the show. Maybe if you learn that that's a slow period, you just plan to not work that period, right? You could, what better time to take a vacation than when there's no work? Because then you're not losing out on work because you're taking a vacation.

So something to keep in mind, whether it's the holidays or some other time, like you've got a low point, that's a good time to maybe go away. And then the reverse of that is also true, which is sometimes in some some places there is greater demand not because the you know the business is running rapidly it's not i'm not saying like uh target hires a lot of people for christmas right that's not what i'm saying what i'm saying is sometimes

you've got people who are taking off and they need help filling in and so like i always had that um at uh um at macworld where we had you know the company like gave us a week off at the end of the year which was great but we operated a website and had to keep posting stories during that week which sucked right because because what it meant is like all of the sales people were just you know they would just go on vacation and all the editors had to work. Maybe not in the office and maybe not more than a half a day at one point during the week. But like we couldn't just leave the website blank. depending on who you're working with, it's possible as a free agent that you could be available to help when people are shorthanded because of a holiday. So something else to keep

in mind is the reverse. Maybe there's an opportunity. And it depends entirely on who you are and what you're doing, but seasonality is important more generally. In some ways, I wish it was a little slower in holidays for me. Right. Because it is super busy with everything going on. And I do like to have a little bit of introspection around the new year. And it's hard to find that when you're so busy. All right.

Well, I think we did a show, David. We did. And we got through the year. And it sounds like we're both excited about next year. Yeah, we're going to go on into 2018, and we will be back with an interview show in a fortnight, and then we'll do this again in four weeks. So we'll be checking in and seeing how 2018 is going then. But until then, if you want to reach us, go to relay.fm slash freeagents.

There's a contact us link on the side. If you want to email us, you can tweet at us at underscore freeagentsfm. You can go to our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash freeagentsgroup. And you can reach me on Twitter. I'm Jay Snell, and David is Max Sparky on Twitter. I think that's it. Happy New Year, everybody. Happy New Year, everybody. Happy New Year.